A thought exercise

And be careful rigging/derigging in this weather, frozen fingers, noses, ears. Yep, Don has a good call there! This way Rich can save his medical help for another day. John L

Andy has found just exactly what it was like to launch on a dusty dry runway. Basically IMC conditions for the first 8 to 10 seconds. Seems scary the first time or two that you do it. You can actually learn how to keep the wings level while making this kind of launch. If you do this you will notice that while you can’t see the horizon you can (and I did) notice that if you looked up 20 to 30 degrees the sky is lighter. Keep the wings level and sort of horizontal to that lighter sky while also following the tow rope and you’d be ok. After the tow plane gets going the amount of dust goes down and the IMC condition disappears. The biggest down side is your sailplane is covered with dust. (So much for cleaning it before takeoff.) And now  you all know why the glider operations in Arizona that use tow planes to launch also use paved runways to launch. Merry Christmas John Lincoln

PS. Andy, just one small under powered Reindeer! I might be a bit late Steve. Can I have a couple more hours!